Story
Beachbody's breakthrough: make the customer the celebrity
Beachbody couldn't afford celebrity endorsements, so after polished 'jacked people' infomercials failed, they spliced in real, messy customer before/after testimonials. The amateur, America's-Funniest-Home-Videos authenticity made the product sell like hotcakes.
“And instead, they try one version of the infomercial where they took a few testimonials that had been sent in from their buyers that said, hey, look at, you know, this was me before and this is me now. And me now wasn't like, didn't look like a Greek god, but just like definitely looked better than the out of shape, overweight person, you know, in the before photo. So they slapped those into the infomercial like real customer testimonials and boom, this thing starts selling like hotcakes.”
Steal thisUse raw, amateur-looking customer testimonials instead of polished celebrity footage; authenticity converts better.
Story
Beachbody's breakthrough: make the customer the celebrity
Beachbody couldn't afford celebrity endorsements, so after polished 'jacked people' infomercials failed, they spliced in real, messy customer before/after testimonials. The amateur, America's-Funniest-Home-Videos authenticity made the product sell like hotcakes.
“And instead, they try one version of the infomercial where they took a few testimonials that had been sent in from their buyers that said, hey, look at, you know, this was me before and this is me now. And me now wasn't like, didn't look like a Greek god, but just like definitely looked better than the out of shape, overweight person, you know, in the before photo. So they slapped those into the infomercial like real customer testimonials and boom, this thing starts selling like hotcakes.”
Steal thisUse raw, amateur-looking customer testimonials instead of polished celebrity footage; authenticity converts better.
Number
Beachbody built a 400,000-person coach network
Sam describes how Beachbody copied the Amway MLM playbook, turning its most successful customers into a nationwide salesforce of 400,000 coaches who recruit and train other coaches for a share of revenue.
$400K
Number of MLM coaches · coaches
“So then he took a page out of the Amway MLM playbook. He's like, here's what we'll do. We'll get our, our most successful customers will become our coaches. We'll teach them how to sell this program for themselves, how to be their own mini Tony Horton. So they go and they build this nationwide network of 400,000 coaches.”
Framework
The MLM 'evil knob'
A friend describes MLM as affiliate marketing with a dial: turn the 'evil knob' to zero (fans can sell, no minimums) and it's ethical, or crank it to 12 (promise riches, force reps to buy $10k of inventory) and it ruins people. Same model, your choice how predatory.
“It's like there's a knob though. The knob is like kind of like your evil knob and you could turn it down to zero. And when you're at zero, you're basically saying, hey, if you're a fan of our product, you can become one of our coaches and there's no minimums. You don't have to subscribe to this monthly thing. You don't have to like, you know, do this the wrong way. He's like, or you turn it up to 12 and you go super evil”
Number
Beachbody: $1B in sales, ~10% EBITDA
Shaan cites a CEO interview: Beachbody expected to do roughly a billion dollars in sales for the year at about 10% EBITDA, i.e. ~$100M in net profit.
$1000M
Annual revenue · USD/year
“And the company, by the way, Beachbody, I'm reading all about their CEO and he's giving an interview and he says they do this year in '20, they'll do a billion in sales and they do about 10% EBITDA. So $100 million in net profit earnings., on a billion in sales.”
Framework
The real margin is the shake, not the content
Sam breaks down Beachbody's economics: the DVD/streaming content and the coach salesforce are loss-leaders, and nearly all profit comes from Shakeology, a ~$130/month nutrition shake sold at near-pure margin. Same pattern as supplement companies generally.
“The shakes, it's like $130 for your one month of nutrition shakes. And that's like pure margin. It goes back to the Andrew Priscilla guys, like supplement company is like they make all their money on the profits come from the shakes. And the whole thing with the coaches is like, cool, we get you hooked on this program and then you want better results.”
Steal thisUse the program and the salesforce as front-end hooks, then make your money on a high-margin recurring consumable.
Framework
"Can you do it?" vs "You can do it" marketing
Sam explains Beachbody's two-mode marketing: most fitness products say 'this is easy, you can do it,' but P90X, Insanity, and 75 Hard flip it to a challenge ('I don't know if you can do it'). The time-bound, hard-sounding framing makes people commit and want to prove themselves.
“He goes, we've always marketed our products as you can do it. This is so easy, you can do it. And what 75 Hard and P90X do is the opposite. They go, can you do it? It's a challenge to you. I don't know if you can do it. This shit's hard., right? So then they started creating all these— they have two versions of their marketing. You can do it marketing and can you do it marketing.”
Steal thisMarket a hard product as a dare ('can you do it?') instead of reassurance to trigger commitment and pride.